


Counter-riposte

by ars_belli



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Breaking Celibacy Vows, Drunken Confessions, F/M, Kingsguard, M/M, Season/Series 04 Spoilers, Sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 13:10:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2026314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ars_belli/pseuds/ars_belli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard provides instruction on sparring like Dornishmen, to Bronn's inexplicable fascination.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counter-riposte

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GreyjoyStarkgirl1985](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyjoyStarkgirl1985/gifts).



> Spoilers for 4.01, 4.08 and possibly season 5. The dialogue in the third paragraph quotes 4.10. I've appropriated a couple of book quotes in a different context and stolen two book!Kingsguard for a cameo. I'm sorry, I know you wanted "a fluffy smutty story," but the angst crept in anyway! (Blame Prince Oberyn…)

"Tyrion!  Stop whomever you're doing and get out here!"  
The voice was not one that Bronn recognised. However, the emphatic banging on the door was all too familiar.  He peered out the keyhole.  Seeing no threat, he opened the door.  
"Are the Kingsguard in a spot of recruiting bother?"  
He beamed at the two White Cloaks, helms open in the heat and wearing gloves in place of their mailed greaves.  
"All they can bring to drag my lord from bed is a pompous child-beater—"  
"Ser Meryn Trant to you, sellsword," the left one snarled.  
He snapped Trant's visor shut before anything else issued from it.  
"—and a pretty _boy_."  
He eyed the right Kingsguard.  
"Although I don't suppose I can blame Joffrey.  He has to have someone to keep Lady Margery amused while he's off murdering prostitutes."  
Pretty Boy's eyebrows danced for a bit.  
"Margery… Why should His Grace want me to fuck a _Tyrell_?  Even he wouldn't be sadistic enough to enjoy watching that."  
The White Cloaks were hardly anointed for their intelligence, but he did expect them to be rather more observant.  Bronn shrugged.  
"My apologies, perhaps Joffrey appointed you to amuse his mother."  
The knight's right arm was too quick to follow.  Belatedly yanking his own sword free at the familiar scrape of steel on steel, Bronn snapped the point up to block…nothing.  Trant's sword swung at him from the left, but he ducked in time.  His colleague's sword remained un-drawn—on the right, the sellsword realised with a start, a left-handed draw—while his empty right sleeve swung uselessly across his body to where the scabbard ought to have been.  Momentarily something suspiciously like sympathy churned in his gut.  No-one wanted to be protected by the likes of Meryn Trant.  
"Ser Meryn, sheath your sword!" a voice called. "I am dreadfully hungover and I won't like the noise Bronn will make killing you."  
A yawn punctuated his employer's statement.  Bronn tore his eyes away from the wildfire glare trying to drill holes through his skull.  He was greeted with the sight of Tyrion Lannister waddling to the door as naked as his name day.  The dwarf stretched ostentatiously and raised a wineskin to his lips.  
"Empty," Tyrion lamented, lowering the wineskin and positioning it for maximum decorum.  "Podrick!"  
"Things went well between the newly-weds then?" Bronn quipped.  
His Lordship stared blearily at him from under a mop of gold curls and an inverted glass fruit bowl from Lys.  He resolved never to eat peaches from that again.  
"Why of course!  One glance at my exquisitely-formed body makes my new child bride quite weak at the knees."  
"It's certainly making me weak at the knees."  
Perhaps Tyrion's state indicated a reconciliation with Shae, Bronn mused.  The dwarf waved at the Kingsguard with his free hand.  
"I suspect that my sweet sister might not respond to the sight of her little brother with quite the same enthusiasm."  
"Have we not just finished this conversation?" interjected Pretty Boy.  
For a long moment Tyrion did nothing but gape.  
"Pod!" Tyrion bellowed.  "Decant the finest wine you can find.  If you can't find any fine wine, steal some from next door."  
Somehow Tyrion had sobered up in the space of a minute.  Bronn watched the next words stick in his throat.  
"We're going to have a toast.  To Noseless and Handless, the Lannister boys!"  
Bronn drank the entire cup of glorious Dornish red without tasting a drop.  Even Tyrion's declaration of _Bugger Cersei, we're going to have some breakfast!_   failed to bring a smile to his lips.  It was hard to enjoy a day that might culminate with his head on a spike.

"When are you fucking…Lady…you know, the noisy one?"  
Bronn saw the mid-sentence attack; good, strike when he was distracted.  Pretty Boy was learning!  
"When it takes my fancy.  Why, you want to join in?"  
No-one delivered a glare of polite disgust better.  
"Not hers?" Lannister asked, parrying an easy thrust.  
"Why?  She has a husband for that."  
He drove his opponent back another foot.  
"If she enjoys her husband, why bother with you?"  
"If the fine lady wants a rough sellsword every so often, whom am I to complain?"  
Lannister's eyes flicked from the sword to his face.  Seizing the opportunity, he angled the blade and lunged in.  Blocked.  
"Do you even remember her name?"  
He feinted double.  Lannister barely got his sword up in time.  It wasn't enough and Bronn continued pushing him backwards.  
"You haven't narrowed it down much!"  
"Terribly sorry, Ser Sellsword.  Would you have been more specific if I had asked which Lord you were fucking?"  
He refused to be taken in by the jibe or the counter-feint, which was suddenly a ping lunge.  He dodged away, letting Lannister's momentum carry him careening past him…  
…and promptly found himself on his arse.  
"I thought you Kingsguard had vows against kicking a man in the crown jewels!" he howled.  
His extreme discomfort was met by a shrug.  If only Winter were here already, at least there would be some ice around…  
"You're the one with all the disdain for 'fighting pretty', as you put it."  
"That was more like 'fighting petty'," Bronn objected.  
His opponent bent to recover the sword dropped in his fall.  The sellsword entertained the idea of lunging after the other sword tucked neatly under Pretty Boy's arm.  Making Lannister pay by setting him across his knee and applying the sparring sword to his naked arse was all too tempting.  It was probably a perfectly shapely one too, he thought gloomily.  Instead he walked over and sat on the sea wall.  
"Pass me that wineskin, will you?"

Perhaps Tyrion's brother did have something up his sleeve.  Even a plan as simple as killing the guards and smuggling him out would do.  Bronn cast a baleful glare down the corridor as Tyrion's other sibling swept past him in a storm of black velvet and gold trim.   _Sooner or later, Cersei always gets what she wants._   He shoved Tyrion's remarks away.  He needed to think.  Yes, he would go to Lannister's quarters, convince him to give his brother a chance at escape.  Nothing obviously amiss, just a careless sot for a jailer and some careful timing regarding the gate guards and the shift changes of the City Watch.  Bronn would ensure that Tyrion took advantage—  
The door was shut.  
Bronn was three steps back the way he came when he realised that a shut door in White Sword Tower didn't command the same respect as a shut door in a whorehouse.  All he had to do was knock…  
"He was an infant!  He didn't decide to kill her!" the Kingslayer roared.  
…and rescue whichever knight was being chewed out by the Lord Commander.  He hoped it was Meryn Trant.  
"A disease doesn't decide to kill you!—"  
 _Seven Hells!_   Even Bronn wasn't brave enough to interrupt Lord Tywin's golden twins in a shouting match.  His hand fell to his side.  There was no harm in waiting it out, surely.  It might even be fun.  
"—but you still cut it out before it does!"  
Bronn firmly squashed the little voice that niggled at him in reprimand.  If he was going to break the rules, why not at the door of the highest-ranked knight in the realm?  It wasn't as if he couldn't hear perfectly well from a foot away.  When the shouting ceased, Bronn put his ear to the wood, careful not to push the door.  
"I choose _you_."  
The unmistakable sounds of kissing reached his ears.  If his common sense hadn't fled like his squire, he would leave, forget—  No.  He was a fiercer target than Podrick Payne.  He was a more dangerous target than a Stark boy hanging from a castle wall.  
"I love my brother," slithered into his ears in that desire-drunk whisper that not even a Braavosi courtesan could fake, "I love my lover."  
His eye was at the keyhole without conscious thought.  Table legs barred his line of sight.  Even so, there was no mistaking the queen, sliding sinuously to the floor and ruining her black dress.  Her hair shone the same colour as the golden hand resting beside her on its owner's thigh.  Bronn darted away, leaning against the wall, breathing hard.  Surely he didn't need to see this?  He wasn't one of Varys's little birds!  All the same, he found himself pressing his ear to the door again.  
"Someone will walk in," Lannister groaned.  
 _Yes, do it now!_   What sort of craven was Lannister, to abandon his brother to death?  To stifle his guilt inside his sister?  
"I don't care," the queen whispered.  
He need not see, he only had to knock.  He would drag Lannister down to the dungeons and see what his Lord Commander's cloak was worth then!  Bronn could not make his hand move.  Somehow his feet drew him towards the stairs alone.  He bit his lip, stifling hysterical laughter at his last words to Tyrion.   _I like you, but I just like myself more._   He bolted into the fresh air, the skin he had just saved not warm in the slightest.

The bells woke him.   _Tyrion is dead._   But no, the sky was still covered by the Stranger's cloak.  Was the King dead?  For a wild moment he thought that Prince Oberyn must have poisoned the Lannisters after all.  Stannis?  The child queen and her dragons?  Bronn groaned and flung his pillow at the wall.  There was not enough noise for a siege and too much for any rest.  He closed his eyes and tried to recall the dream.  Images cascaded from the backs of his eyelids like water through his cupped hands.  Crimson silks and white wool flowing down the rough steps, a perfect tessellation of marble-pale bodies shifting on the cracked tiles and the sea lapping at the shore, echoed by a silver tongue amidst golden curls. He drifted asleep to sounds he knew all too well, the Kingslayer's laboured panting and the Queen's cruel laughter and the soft noises of their mouths meeting.

The bells had ceased when he woke again, replaced by the usual hubbub of nocturnal King's Landing.  A fitful breeze by the open window tried vainly to pry the sweaty nightclothes from his body.  He gulped lemonwater, wiping his mouth on his wrist.   _Fuck the water, bring me wine!_   Clegane snarled in his head.  Laughing at the vanished Hound—and his stupid dreams—felt just as heady as a barrel of strongwine.  Bronn rubbed his eyes.  So he secretly wanted to fuck the queen?  If he had a gold dragon for every man who wanted their cock between her legs, he'd be as rich as two Lannisters.  Perching on the windowsill, he leaned against the stone and stared out at the city.  The Red Keep was just visible, White Sword Tower balanced on the cliff-top, lighted even at this hour.  Melancholy trickled down his spine.  If he tarried any longer, he might start thinking of King's Landing as home.  He had one, now, an empty castle and an empty-headed wife and a good-sister to kill.  Bronn gargled more lemonwater and spat into the street, but the bitterness lingered.   _Every man has his price._   At least he had been more costly than her brother.  Was it even a debt, to suffer the fantasy of every whore in the Seven Kingdoms?  Stripping away the commanding presence of the Father with every piece of armour cast aside, feeling the Smith's strength pinning her down, raking her nails along the Warrior's body, the Stranger's tongues whispering wicked nothings into each other's ears, until she made him moan and tremble like the Maid?   _Coward, Lannister._   He tossed Tyrion's glass onto the cobbles.  The tinkling of the lion-embossed crystal smashing somewhere below was obscenely delicate.  The lights of White Sword Tower had gone out.

The swords clanged, scraped, locked.  Bronn braced himself against the cliff and kicked his opponent's feet out from underneath him.  Lannister staggered backwards, off-balance.  Bronn feinted high, went low, belting his opponent's kneecaps with the sword.  Pretty Boy crumpled to the ground, swearing.  He swung in for the final cut at Lannister's exposed throat.  The knight blocked the blow, desperately pushing him back.  
"Yield!" Bronn called.  
Lannister's lip jutted out mulishly.  Chuckling at the sight of him sprawled on the sand-worn tiles, Bronn leapt two steps forward.  This time he dodged his opponent's swing.  Cat-quick, Lannister locked the blades from behind, twisting his wrist and pushing a foot against Bronn's knee with all his weight.  The sellsword cartwheeled over his head and smacked into the stone.  
"Who in Seven Hells taught you that?" he spluttered.  
He ran his tongue over his lip.  Bitten in the fall.  His knees were bruised too. At least they both remembered how to fall properly.  
"Martell," Lannister panted.  "Ser Lewyn Martell, Prince Oberyn's uncle."  
He watched the younger man rise smoothly and perch on the sea wall.  A pause was rather sensible, he decided.  
"Even a white cloak can't stop a Martell from cheating!"  
Bronn scrambled to his feet.  He gulped from the wineskin and returned his mouthful of sand to the ocean, now flavoured with Arbor red. He stretched out his legs.  
"Tyrion and I never did have that drink Prince Oberyn promised," he reflected.  
"Lucky you!  I've had the misfortune to spend an evening with Oberyn many a time."  
Only a Kingsguard would consider that a misfortune! Despite his complaints, the memories sparked those impossibly-green eyes like flint to tinder. The resulting gleam picked out the flecks of gold in his irises and the deep black of his pupils.  
"Every few months Oberyn's presence would descend upon the capital with a few bottles of that saffron gin his uncle liked.  In return, Lewyn Martell would set his protégé against Arthur Dayne's and we would spar for a week straight."  
"And drink?" Bronn asked, doing likewise.  
He supposed there wasn't much left to do with the Prince of Dorne, if you were a knight sworn to avoid whoring, insulting the royal family and poisoning members of the Court.  The Red Viper and the Kingslayer.  Now there was a fascinating fight!  The two Kingsguard knights would have had a duel to tell his grandchildren, that was certain, but he would wager a hundred gold dragons that their students would have been the closer-fought match.  And the dirtier.  Not that he had a hundred dragons…  
"And drink!  Red Viper or no, I had no fear of poison.  There wasn't bad blood between Sunspear and Casterly Rock."  
Lannister's smile faded.  A hand plucked the Arbor red from his grasp.  
"Not yet."  
He shook his head as if to clear it, blond hair leached to silver by the evening.  Stray drops of wine lingered on his lips. Bronn had seen enough dead children to know that it would take more than wine to remove the memories of two bundles in red cloaks set before the Iron Throne, with none of their mother's laughter left, nor their father's features.  
"At any rate, Oberyn used to drink Lewyn and Arthur and I under the table—win or lose!—and there was one morning when I woke up in Princess Elia's lap with absolutely no recollection of the night before…"  
He addressed the sand-worn mosaics rather than the sellsword, spinning the wineskin in his long fingers. _You raped her, you murdered her, you killed her children!_   Which Elia had Oberyn's litany brought to mind, the laughing sister or the royal corpse?  
"All in their graves now."  
Bronn made a stab at erasing the frown settling on his brow.  
"I thought Dornishmen sparred more with the swords between their legs."  
"Are there any racist jokes you don't know?"  
Lannister raised the wine to his lips again, the muscles in his neck flashing in the moonlight.  
"I don't know any Kingsguard jokes."  
He snatched the wineskin back.  Pretty Boy drank as fast as his sister! For once he was thankful that it wasn't a Dornish vintage.  
"There aren't any."  
Bronn nearly choked on his Arbor red.  Of course the Kingslayer would be the last person to hear one!  
"None?" he gasped out.  "No snide remarks?  Lewyn Martell teaching sparring in the bath-house?  Arthur Dayne and his skill with a very long lance?"  
He turned to his companion in mock puzzlement.  
"Or are they not jests if they're true?"  
Pretty Boy's face had gone as sour as the wine. He watched a flush sweep from underneath his collar to the soft skin across his sharp cheekbones.  Bronn grinned.  Pretty Boy couldn't even meet his eyes! Of course pride was the way to attack a Lannister.  
"Lion got your tongue?  Are you going to threaten me?  Without a swo—"  
Lannister's lips were cold.  Bronn tasted sour wine and cloying honey and bitter gold.  His fingers slid along the knight's clothes, seeking a grip to shove him back.  He yanked at the soft leather of his collar, but found himself closer, somehow.  Their mouths separated.  He heard himself moaning like one of Littlefinger's whores at the loss.  His fingers grasped vainly at the short, blond hair.  Teeth brushed his throat, far too gently.  The breath on his exposed neck made him shiver.   _Bite, Gods, please!_   Suddenly his ears were awash with laughter.  
"All I needed were the right weapons," Lannister chuckled.  
The tongue which had so brazenly explored his mouth moments ago darted out along Pretty Boy's bottom lip.  The sight alone seemed to be strangling him.  Or was that the pressure of the golden hand at his back and the fingers curled around his collarbone?  
"Kingslayer," he cursed.  
It only emerged as a whisper.  Lannister uncoiled himself and stood, Valyrian steel smile slicing through the night.  It was only a trick of the light, surely, the way the knight towered over him.  That and his closeness, filling his nostrils with sweat and soap and aftershave.  He made to stand, but the golden hand on his shoulder thrust him down again.  For a wild moment he saw the white room and the white chair and the queen kneeling before her brother's parted thighs.  But Pretty Boy merely bent to whisper in his ear.  
"Same time tomorrow?"  
He finally found his voice.  
"Provided we have further instruction on sparring like Dornishmen."  
The younger man walked off, laughing to himself.  Bronn sat dumbfounded, wondering what else one of Aerys' Seven had taught him.

Lannister was going to kill him.  Bronn's fingers scrabbled at the smooth jade column.  By instinct he had reached for his scabbard (sword confiscated), then his sheath (dagger too), but if he could just reach for the dirk in his boot…  
"Tyrion ought to have chosen someone more likely," Lannister snarled up at him.  
He opened his mouth, wondered how far the sound would travel in the empty throne room, shut it again.  Lannister adjusted his grip, hauling him a little higher.  His Adam's apple was crushed by a thumb and his mouth fell open again in pain.  
"Keep that up and you'll be fish enough to pass for a Tully," the knight observed.  
His grip loosened slightly.  
"Lancel," Bronn babbled, with the little air that was left him.  "She's been fucking Lancel and Kettleblack and Moon Boy for all I know."  
"Lancel," Lannister repeated, drawing out the 'a' like spun sugar.  "King Robert had a fool for a squire.  Fool enough to think that killing the king might let him have the queen."  
He only needed his assailant to drop him, damn it!  If only the White Cloaks weren't confiscating all blades but their own.  Those long, delicate fingers clawed deeper at his throat and suddenly the frantic gasps for air weren't a pretence.  
"Fool enough to think that the queen might have _him_ ," the queen's knight continued darkly.  
Bronn kicked, but he only succeeded in hurting his feet against the gold Kingsguard armour.  And in provoking Lannister to clamp harder on his throat.  He thrashed in response, smacking his head on the stone.   _This is not how a knight should handle a fellow knight, let alone some cripple!_   Not that Bronn wanted to be handled chivalrously, but he had intended a very different sort of impropriety this evening.  
"As for Ser Osmund…does he think to make himself another Cristan Cole?"  
The musings meant nothing to Bronn.  He glared downwards at the man holding him, but his face was as implacable as the carving of the Warrior in the Great Sept.  Only the eyes burned wildfire.  They cut as sharp as the Iron Throne, empty and swimming in his line of vision; greener than the jade columns of the upper balcony.   _Lord Tywin's eyes.  Will there be a song about this too?_  
Abruptly, Lannister released his hold.  
He crumpled to the marble flagstones, legs askew under him.  Above him, Lannister was bowing, attention diverted from his enemy.  He snatched the dirk from his boot, shoving it up his sleeve.  
"Your Grace," he murmured.  
A gold-embroidered hem swayed into his line of vision.   _Gods be good!  I never thought to be pleased to see the queen._   Hopefully her precious golden twin had no interest in anything below her bosom.  
"The Imp's pet sellsword," Her Grace mocked.  "How did you offend the Lord Commander?"  
If any more ice coated those words, they could be mistaken for the Wall.  
A gloved fist hauled him bodily to his feet.  Only Osmund Kettleblack was fool enough to wear his nice gloves on duty.  Not to mention idiot enough not to remove his arm from the queen's while picking up an enemy with the other.  
"Her Grace asked you a question," the Kingsguard growled.  
 _"I told the Lord Commander that you've been fucking his mistress,"_   nearly sprang from his lips.  He would enjoy watching the two White Cloaks murder each other.  Instead all he could do was cough.  
"Does it matter?" he managed.  
He had to suck in lungfuls of air before he could add "Your Grace."  
Bronn added a shrug, feeling his ankle throb.   _You going to say something clever,_ Ser _Bronn?_   But Lannister got in first.  
"Why, Ser Osmund!  Just the man we were discussing!"  
He risked a glance at the twins.  The queen's face held nothing for him, while her brother's remained fixed in serene fury.  The edges of the hidden dirk pricked at his skin.  
"Along with our dear cousin Lancel," the Lord Commander continued blandly, "And the rumours of their…unusual dedication…to Her Grace."  
The silence stretched out like the long summer.  Finally Her Grace shattered it.  
"How convenient that our 'dear cousin Lancel' has taken to the Warrior's Sons under a vow of silence.  Perhaps Ser Bronn should exhibit similar self-control."  
Bronn swallowed.  Of course Cersei would have tidied up all her loose ends.  But for the Lannister name, Lancel's vow of silence would have been taken before Ser Ilyn.  
"Or be taken where he can spread no more rumours," her brother added.  
"Quite," the queen consented softly.  
"What…rumours…might these be now?" laughed Ser Osmund, too loudly.  
"Perhaps you will be told, on your way to the black cells," Lannister snapped.  
"Lord Commander," Kettleblack protested, "My orders are to take Her Grace—"  
The double entendre was an unwise slip on the knight's part, Bronn saw, watching the Kingslayer unsheathe his Valyrian steel smile again.  
"Far more fitting for a former sellsword to be escorted by another, is it not?" Lannister asked.  
The former sellsword dislodged his arm from the queen's quick smart, his face as crimson as her skirts.  Her brother took her newly-freed hand and kissed it.  
"Your Grace, might I have the honour…?" he murmured, eyes on her face and lips on her knuckles.  
 _Florian and bloody Jonquil!  Do they think this is a song?_  
"Take me to my chambers, Lord Commander."  
The queen could hardly say anything else.   _Deftly done, even you have to admit that._   Bronn massaged his neck, eyes following the retreating pair.   _Will those strong fingers of his slip inside her cunt or around her neck?_   He didn't know which option pleased him less.  The remaining Kingsguard interrupted his thoughts with a cuff around the ear.  
" _What have you been fucking telling the Kingslayer_?"  
Kettleblack's voice was a quavering treble of panic.  He fought down laughter.  
"I told him what you've been fucking," he snapped back.  
He could draw that dirk faster than Kettleblack his longsword.  The other knight's eyes widened.  Yes, he could shove it through one of those eyes…  
And what?  Flee the city?  Flee Westeros?  Chase after the Imp and the Mother of Dragons?  All for the sake of a drunken slip of the tongue that he'd been damnably sure Tyrion would have told his brother anyway?  He cursed every branch and root of the Lannister family tree.  
Kettleblack drew his sword.  
"You should keep those white breeches laced around Margery Tyrell, Kettleblack!" Bronn spat.  
The scrape of steel as the knight returned his sword to its scabbard was sweeter than any song he had ever heard.

"Was does Milord require?" the whore-keeper purred.  
"Ser, actually."  
Bronn eyed the blond in front of him.  Astonishing eyes, like that wench for whom Pod was now squiring (if being a nuisance could be called squiring).  Otherwise, the young man was not to his taste at all.  The brothel manager was too oily, like his keeper, Littlefinger.  Too handsome, too young, too arrogant, too muscular, too…blond.   _Prettier Boy._   No, that had too many other connotations.  
"Ah, but Ser is fortunately married to the Stokeworth heiress Lady Lollys, is he not?"  
"Do remind her of that, next time she visits!"  
He stretched out by the fire, staring up at the lean-framed young man.  He could have crawled straight from the dungeon to his apartments.  He ought to be sprawled in bed eating fruit to slake his thirst and dozing away his headache and nausea in a sea of goose-down pillows. Yet when had he been so level-headed?  No, he had to prove that a sleepless night in a pitch-black cell so miserable that even the cockroaches stayed away left him none the worse for wear.  
"Milord requires…something different," he mused.  "No curls.  Not red-headed, nor dark and foreign.  Someone…"  
 _Not Ros.  Not Shae._  
"A lovely, companionable blonde, perhaps? If Ser desires a change, she does prefer being on top…"  
Was she straddling him now, a glorious tumble of golden hair brushing his chest while she ground his narrow hips into the royal bed, delighting in the sweat gilding his muscles and the dexterity of his fingers on her breasts and his growls when she raked her claws along his skin?  Bronn suppressed a shudder.  
"…She's in from Lys, only here a month, specialises in restoring the melancholy customer.   _Quixotic._ "  
Presumably that meant expensive.  He took the complimentary wine, sipping thoughtfully.  Companionship meant his wife, with her generous breasts and vapid smiles.  After a night in the Black Cells he had earned some comfort!  And yet…  He took another sip.  No, he didn't want to be soothed.  
"Whom did Oberyn have when he was last here?"  
He rolled his eyes at the pained expression.  For a moment Lancel pouted at him from under the blond hair and wounded pride.  
"I know, I know, clients' tastes are entirely confidential!  But I'm hardly asking for everyone he and Ellaria shared.  Just one.  An opportunity that passed him by, Oberyn said."  
The name-dropping had a marked effect.  Not, thankfully, being laughed out of the brothel never to return, but he decided not to stretch plausibility any further.  He swung a leg casually, waiting for the trap to close.  
"A challenge?" enquired Rather-Prettier-than-Ser-Lancel.  
"Those might have been his words," he agreed pleasantly.  
He watched Prettier Boy's tongue dart out to moisten his lips.  They looked pink and soft, not chapped from too many hours sparring in all weathers.  
"I'm afraid that he is unavailable, Ser."  
There was a soft emphasis on the _he_.  
"Heart broken by Oberyn's demise?" he countered.  "He wouldn't be the only one."  
Bronn set down his wine, patting the seat beside him.  The whore didn't come to heel as Lancel would have.  Instead he leaned in closer, palms brushing his unshaven cheeks and fingertips trailing lazily down his neck.  
"To be honest, Ser, you don't strike me as the customer with both preferences."  
It was too late to back out now.  Anyone truly conversant with the Red Viper would have known the risk.  
"I can hardly have a preference if I only know one of the options now, can I?"  
He was rewarded with a laugh as the young man sat, coiled around his body.  Bone-coloured silks clung to every muscle, pale and pure as a septon's robes.   _Take me, teach me, defile me,_   the sight offered.  He was too bold to be Lancel, even in five years or ten.  
"I'm afraid that I am _prohibitively_   expensive," whispered Not-Quite-as-Handsome-as-Ser-Jaime against his ear.  
"Inhibitively expensive, you mean?"  
This near, he was all blond curls and long eyelashes and perfect contours, all gilded in invincible confidence.   _All Lannister._   A hand moved smoothly into his breeches.  The thought struck him unaware and defenceless, that it ought to be colder and heavier, with just enough space between finger and thumb for the metal to fuck him raw. He would lick it clean afterwards of course, until the Lord Commander's approval showed under his white breeches and he satisfied that too.  His cock stiffened.  
"Apparently not," the whore laughed.  
The voice broke the illusion.  Bronn opened his mouth to apologise and extract himself and run back to his wife. _Giving up, are we?_   His brush with the game had cost him a night's sleep in the dungeons.  Why risk more?  Why have a poor copy until his thirst demanded the unattainable?  And yet…he might learn enough to vanquish Lannister at this too.  
"If I want your lips to move, I'll place my cock between them first," he growled.  
That earned him a gasp and a hard squeeze through his smallclothes.  The smooth cheek pressed to his own smelled of honeyed soap and his yielding mouth tasted like wine.  The similarity was just sufficient to quell his earlier doubt. Yes, he would have the boy on his knees, a fistful of gold curls guiding his mouth to every scar on the way down; he would chain his hands behind his back, leaving him unable to pleasure himself, powerless to stop the older man from slicing the white silk to shreds and running his sword along that perfect body; force him to stay silent and obedient and penitent until he received a knight's cock in that silver-tongued mouth.   _Was that the Jaime which Oberyn first saw?_


End file.
